Living with Anxiety

Do you ever feel like you’re not good enough? Do you ever feel like you’re being left behind? You’re approaching that age you never thought you’d reach, that always seemed as if it was light years away but then all of a sudden, it’s here. It’s here and you’re here and you feel like you should be doing more by now.

Do you ever hate the way you look, the way you speak or the way you act or the job you’re in? In a constant state of questioning yourself, what you do and who you do it with and you don’t know how to change it. It’s exhausting right? A never ending thought process with no off switch to give you the break you really desperately need to sort yourself out.

So, you’ve kept yourself busy for a couple of weeks, but you’ve finally got that day off you need. This is time you’ve been craving right? This is some much needed “you” time, a day all to yourself in which you can do whatever you need to do to try and get your head straight. Maybe you just feel like you need a day of doing nothing, you’re gonna sleep in today, catch up on some much needed sleep. Then you’re just going to bum around the house for day. Fuck it, right? This is your day. Except, you can’t sleep in, no matter how much you want to. You wake up, you feel run down. You feel like absolute shit because you haven’t gone outside yet and it’s gone midday and the weather is amazing. But, this is the day you had planned for yourself. So why the fuck does it feel so awful? Why the fuck does everything feel so awful all of the time?

This is what living with Anxiety is like, a constant reminder of everything that has happened in the past, your head trying to convince you that there’s nothing for you in the future, all the while you’re not considering what is happening right now and that’s the most important time right? Right now. The past has already happened and the future is defined by what is happening right now, but you can’t focus on the right now until the right now becomes the past and then you are stuck in this never ending loop of focussing on all the wrong times.

Things I’ve found that help me stop worrying… Go for a long walk, go and explore somewhere you haven’t done so before. It’s free and easy to do and you never know, you might find your new favourite place, and then that place is yours because you found it.

What if you genuinely can’t face the outside right now? You can re-arrange your room. This might seem a bit pointless but if you hear me out… You spend a lot of time in your room right? How long has it looked the way it has? You wake up every day and see the same old view. What if you woke up and things looked slightly different and it’s not the same old view that you’re not completely bored of seeing. Think of it this way, by doing this, you’re at least focussing on the present, you’re keeping yourself busy and you have a sick new room to look forward to as an outcome. It’s not the biggest of mental victories sure, but it’s a start.

It’s so easy for me to give suggestions as if they’re a magic solution that will definitely work, but, what if you just really can’t face anything today? Even getting out of bed just seems like a huge uphill task, well the most important thing you need to remember, and you’re gonna have to remind yourself of this… You’re doing so well to be where you are right now. You may feel like you’re being left behind, or that you’re not good enough or you might be comparing yourself to other people on a daily basis, but YOU have done so well to be where YOU are. Anxiety is a horrible, horrible thing. It can be crippling and you may be suffering with it, but at least you’re coping, even if you’re only just coping, you’re still coping and that makes you so much stronger than you think you might be right now.